Post Archive by Month

In 2010, Clinton’s first full year as secretary of state, an internal study finds that in one week, more than 9,200 emails are sent from the State Department’s Executive Secretariat servers to 16 web-based email domains, including gmail.com, hotmail.com, and att.net. These could include both work-related and personal emails. (US Department of State, 5/25/2016)

In 2012, WikiLeaks publishes over five million e-mails from the US-based private intelligence company Stratfor. Stratfor provides confidential intelligence to major corporations and branches of the US government.

At some unknown point in either 2010 or 2011, Bart Mongoven, vice president for Stratfor’s public policy intelligence group, writes in an email to Rodger Baker, Stratfor’s vice president of geopolitical analysis: “[Bill] Clinton’s biggest project on climate change comes through the Clinton Global Initiative, which has climate among its top priorities. The CGI acts as a funnel for money from wealthy individuals and corporations toward programs and policies that Clinton supports (or that support his or his wife’s political objectives). CGI has raised more than $100 million for climate change organizations. […] CGI and the Clinton Foundation are suspected of being shakedown operations for the Clintons, and especially for Hillary Clinton from 2001 to 2008. If a corporation wanted to be on the Clintons’ good side, it had to show up at CGI or give money to the foundation. The money from CGI or the foundation would go to non-profits that promoted issues of importance to Hillary Clinton’s political calculus. In other words, if she needed something to be an important national issue, he would pressure a corporation or billionaire to fund activists who would promote the issue that she needed. CGI has been a good way to read the tea leaves on Hillary Clinton, and it may still be. Either way, the future priorities of CGI are important to understand. Other, less cynical people, say that the CGI and the Clinton Foundation are simple, well-meaning organizations dedicated to funding good works and making the world a better place. (I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.)” (WikiLeaks, 10/19/2012)

These three years are the only full fiscal years during Clinton’s term as secretary of state. In the immediately previous years, foreign governments donated tens of millions of dollars every year.

In 2015, Reuters will report that in fact foreign governments did continue to give tens of millions each year during this time. After Reuters discovers the discrepancies, the Clinton Foundation will acknowledge the oversight and claims it will refile at least five years of tax returns to fix it.

However, the Clinton campaign will also call allegations of corruption in the Clinton Foundation “absurd conspiracy theories.” (Reuters, 4/23/2015)

It will remain publicly unknown until the video is leaked to Fox News in October 2016.

A photo capture of Clinton as she appears in the 2010 cybersecurity video. (Credit: Fox News)

In the video, Clinton says that employees have a “special duty” to recognize the importance of cybersecurity. “The real key to cybersecurity rests with you. Complying with department computing policies and being alert to potential threats will help protect all of us.”

According to a later account by Fox News, “Clinton goes on in the video to underscore the important work the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security and IT department were doing to guard against cyber-attacks. She warns hackers try to ‘exploit’ vulnerabilities and penetrate department systems. She then urges staffers to log onto the internal cybersecurity awareness website or subscribe to their ‘cybersecurity awareness newsletter.’”

Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will later find the video ironic, given Clinton’s own security issues with her private email server. He will say, “Hillary Clinton needs only to look into the mirror to find the biggest cybersecurity risk.”

Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon will say, “This is not new. It has been widely reported that during Clinton’s tenure the State Department issued these kinds of warnings about possible cybersecurity to employees. These warnings were more than appropriate given that it was subsequently confirmed that State’s email was hacked.” (Fox News, 10/22/2016)

Clinton speaks on her Blackberry in the lobby of a Honolulu hotel on January 13, 2010. (Credit: Mandel NGAN / Agence France Presse / Getty Images)

Bill Johnson, the State Department’s political adviser to the special operations section of the US Pacific Command (PACOM), will later claim that he is present in Honolulu, Hawaii, while Clinton comes to visit. During her trip, news breaks of a large earthquake in Haiti, which takes place on January 12, 2010.

Clinton goes to a security communications facility in the basement of PACOM headquarters to help organize a humanitarian response to the earthquake. She wants to communicate with her top staff back at State Department headquarters in Washington, DC, but she and her aides are not allowed to bring their cell phones into PACOM headquarters because they are using unsecured, personal devices. They ask Johnson for an exception to the rules, but he refuses, citing alarms and lockdowns that would be automatically triggered if anyone brought an unauthorized signal-emitting unit into the building.

So instead, according to Johnson, “She had her aides go out, retrieve their phones, and call [State Department headquarters] from outside,” using open, unsecure lines. “It was really an eye-opener to watch them stand outside using nonsecure comms [communications] and then bring messages to the secretary so she could then conduct a secure [call] with the military” and the State Department. (Newsweek, 5/25/2016)

Clinton and Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika meet in Algiers, Algeria, on October 29, 2012. (Credit: US Embassy Algiers)

Around January 14, 2010, the Algerian government donates $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Algeria has never donated to the foundation before, which means this is a violation of the 2008 “memorandum of understanding” between the foundation and the Obama White House, which prohibited new or increased donations from foreign governments as long as Clinton is the secretary of state.

The donation is direct aid to assist relief efforts just days after a large earthquake in Haiti that killed thousands. It also coincides with a spike in Algeria’s lobbying visits to the State Department. In 2010, Algeria spends $400,000 lobbying US officials on Algeria’s human rights record and US-Algeria relations. (The Washington Post, 2/25/2015)

The next year, Clinton’s State Department will approve a 70% increase in military export authorizations to Algeria, despite continued issues with the country’s human rights records. For the first time, the department will authorize the sale of almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment.” The sale of US military weapons to Algeria is $2.4 billion, triple what it was in the last four years of the previous Bush administration. (The International Business Times, 5/26/2015)

In June 2015, shortly after the Algerian donation is finally made public, former President Bill Clinton will comment on it, “[Critics] said, ‘Oh you got $500,000 from Algeria at very same time they were lobbying the State Department.’ Those two facts are accurate but if you put them back-to-back they are incredibly misleading. Here’s why: I never considered that the Algerians gave me the money.” (The International Business Times, 5/26/2015) He will add, “Two days after the Haiti earthquake…there were very few countries in the world I would not accept from for help to Haiti. […] [T]here may be a thing or two that I would change, but the basic idea, I think it is right. I still think it is the right thing to do.” (CNN, 6/11/2015)

She emails her chief of staff Cheryl Mills and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and tells them, “I sent you emails [redacted] before removing their email info so pls [please] do not forward to anyone and delete after reading.” The reason for the instruction is unclear, as the email she is referring to is later redacted. (Politico, 2/29/2016) (US Department of State, 8/31/2015)